Tag Archives: Simon Fishel

Did you know that the Fertility Show will be in Manchester next month? The event which has taken place at London’s Olympia for many years is spreading its wings and will be held at Manchester’s Central Convention Complex in Windmill St on March 25 and 26.

Tickets are now on sale here so do come along if you are nearby – I will be there too speaking about how to choose a fertility clinic and will be on the Fertility Network UK stand so come and say hello!

It’s next weekend and if you haven’t booked your tickets yet, there is still time. It’s true that the Fertility Show can feel a bit like some kind of Ideal Home Exhibition for fertility problems, but it’s well worth visiting for the amazing seminar programme alone where you can catch many of the country’s leading experts and benefit from their wisdom and advice.

Talks on Saturday include:

How To Get Pregnant (and to have the best possible pregnancy) with Zita West

Innovations in embryo selection. Do they really make a difference? with Rachel Cutting MBE, Chair 2010-2014 of the Association of Clinical Embryologists and Principal Embryologist at Jessop Fertility in Sheffield

Stress and its impact on fertility with Jacky Boivin, Professor of Health Psychology at Cardiff University and Lead Researcher at Cardiff Fertility Studies

Factors to consider when choosing a fertility clinic with me! (Kate Brian, journalist, broadcaster, author of bestselling The Complete Guide to IVF, mother of two IVF children, Lead of Women’s Voices at the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists and London Representative for Infertility Network UK)

Immunology – potentially hazardous treatment or your best chance of success? with Mr Mohammed Mahmoud, Consultant in Reproductive Medicine of The Newlife Fertility Clinic and Siobhan Quenby, Professor of Obstetrics and Director of the Biomedical Research Unit in Reproductive Health at the University of Warwick.

Improving the odds of IVF working for you with Yacoub Khalaf, Consultant Gynaecologist and Medical Director of the Assisted Conception Unit at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS

Dealing with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) with Adam Balen, Professor of Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at Leeds NHS Centre for Reproductive Medicine and Chairman of the British Fertility Society.

Issues for families created with donors with DC Network founding member Olivia Montuschi.

What men need to know about their fertility – testing it, boosting it, treating it with Allan Pacey, Professor of Andrology at the University of Sheffield and former Chairman of the British Fertility Society.

Complementary Therapies – can they boost your fertility? with Dr Gillian Lockwood, Medical Director of Midland Fertility Services and ethics spokesperson for the British Fertility Society, Andrew Loosely who practices herbal medicine and Barbara Scott, chair of the Association of Reproductive Reflexologists.

Fertility treatment for older women with Tarek El-Toukhy, Consultant in Reproductive Medicine and Surgery at Guy’s and St. Thomas’ Hospital.

How to keep costs down – do you really need those add-ons? with Dr, John Parsons, part of the team that established the first IVF pregnancy to deliver at the Hammersmith hospital.

Sperm and egg donors from the UK with Laura Witjens, egg donor and former CEO of the National Gamete Donation Trust, and Venessa Smith, Donor Services Co-ordinator from the London Women’s Clinic.

Steps to choosing the right adoption agency with First4Adoption’s Gemma Gordon-Johnson.

Travelling to the USA for egg donor treatment – the patient’s perspective and the clinic that treated them with Sarah Esdaile and her partner who had treatment in the USA and Dr Michael Levy, Director of the Donor egg programme at Shady Grove Clinic.

A patient’s experience of the fertility rollercoaster and what to expect with Jessica Hepburn, trustee at Infertility Network UK and author of The Pursuit of Motherhood.

Why should I give it another go? with Tim Child, Associate Professor and Subspecialist in Reproductive Medicine, University of Oxford and Honorary Consultant Gynaecologist, John Radcliffe Hospital.

An overview of the common causes of infertility and the main approaches to treatment with Kamal Ojha, Medical Director of Concept Fertility and Honorary Senior Lecturer at St George’s Hospital.

Fertility treatment for older women with Dimitrios Nikolaou, Consultant Gynaecologist, lead clinician at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Hospital’s Assisted Conception Unit and Medical Director of Fertility for Life.

What to think about before going abroad for treatment with Ben Saer, who with his wife Becky had successful fertility treatment in the Czech Republic, Dimitris Kavakas of Embryolab based in Thessaloniki and Dr Carlos Doscouto of Spanish IVF clinic Women’s Health Dexeus.

Dealing with and treating, endometriosis with Haitham Hamoda, Consultant Gynaecologist in reproductive medicine and surgery at King’s College Hospital.

Top Ten ways to cope with infertility with Anya Sizer, rregional organiser at Fertility Network UK.

Getting your head around treatments, clinics and statistics with Juliet Tizzard, Director of Strategy and Corporate Affairs at the HFEA

.Men Matter Too with fertility Counsellor Anthony Ryb.

Fertility treatment on the NHS? with Anil Gudi and Amit Shah, Consultant Gynaecologists who run the NHS fertility service at the Homerton Fertility Centre in East London.

Nutrition to help with PCOS, endometriosis and fibroids with Dr Marilyn Glenville.

How to deal with the diagnosis of unexplained infertility with Dr Jane Stewart, Consultant in Reproductive Medicine at the Newcastle Fertility Centre.

How to keep costs down – do you really need those add-ons? with Yacoub Khalaf, Medical Director of the Assisted Conception Unit at Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS.

Overseas egg donors. Who are they and how are they chosen? with Dr Israel Ortega of IVI Madrid in Spain and Nancy Block of Fertility Source Companies in the US explain.

As you can see, there is something here for everyone and having access to so many experts under one roof presents a unique opportunity to learn more about fertility and the treatments which may help. You can buy tickets from the website www.fertilityshow.co.uk

Last night I went to a fascinating discussion organised by Progress Educational Trust and the Science Journalism Department at City University looking at the way that new developments in fertility treatment are reported in the press. The debate was initially sparked by a letter to The Times written by fertility specialists Professor Nick Macklon and Professor Siladitya Bhattacharya about the reporting of fertility-related stories in the media and the impact these can have on patients. The regular bombardment of stories of advances in fertility treatment that are allegedly going to improve success rates and transform the future can make it difficult for patients to separate hype from reality.

The discussion started with a ten-minute presentation by each of the three speakers for the evening, beginning with Simon Fishel who is managing director of CARE and who had come in for some criticism for hailing an unproven new approach as a “the most exciting breakthrough we’ve had in probably thirty years”. Fishel made the point that any new advance would always be unproven at first and suggested that a baby was “all the proof that is needed”. He explained that waiting to have the gold standard of evidence would simply take too long for most fertility patients who needed help right away, not many years down the line.

Fishel was followed by Professor Nick Macklon from Southampton who painted a picture of the couple who had just been through unsuccessful treatment and who were facing a crisis, but were then presented with hope by a newspaper article claiming that a new breakthrough treatment could offer success when in reality this was completely unproven. He said that patients were paying the price and that journalism needed to be more discerning.

The final speaker was Dr Hannah Devlin, Science Editor at The Times, who began by explaining why human interest fertility stories had all the ingredients to “set the heart of the news editor racing”. She discussed why it was important to report on developments as they emerged, which might be well before there was the gold standard level of evidence, but admitted that ‘breakthrough’ was a word she tried to avoid. She said that the time pressures of a daily paper could make it difficult for journalists, and that sometimes the mere fact that everyone else was covering a story made it news in itself.

During the question and answer session that followed, much of the discussion focused on the idea of responsibility – the responsibility of the scientist, of the press officer, of the journalist and of the clinician. A question from Stuart Lavery of IVF Hammersmith made the point that with so much of IVF carried out in the private sector, there was often a marketing element to stories of new fertility advances.

From the patient perspective, the evening raised many issues. Yes, of course we want to be informed about any new advances, but we need news stories about these to be balanced and fair. We need them to cut through the hype and to present us with a realistic idea of how helpful this would be to us as patients today. In an industry where everyone seems happy to keep taking our money as long as there is any sliver of a chance of success, honesty has never been more important.

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Fertility Matters is written by Kate Brian who has been through fertility problems, tests and IVF treatment herself. The website gives reliable information, advice and support to anyone who is having difficulties getting pregnant. Read more